Poulsbo defense attorney Thomas Stuart Olmstead pleaded guilty last month to attempted possession of an unlawful firearm after police found a short-barrel, single-shot .22 bolt-action rifle at his Poulsbo residence.

Short-barreled rifles are illegal in Washington State.

The guilty plea was part of a deal offered by the Kitsap County Prosecutor’s Office after Olmstead, 66, was charged with three felonies in May. Charges included possessing a stolen firearm, possession of an unlawful firearm and possession of stolen property in the second degree.

Olmstead originally pleaded not guilty to all charges, but later took the deal, he said, because after two years of the charges “holding over my head ... I just wanted it behind me.”

The deal included no jail time and a “minimal fine,” Olmstead said. A stipulation was also added that dropped the level of the crime from a class C felony to a gross misdemeanor, which is punishable by either a $5,000 maximum fine, up to one year in jail, or both.

Olmstead paid a $1,700 fine and his jail time was suspended. The original charges carried a combined maximum jail time of up to 20 years in jail, a combined fine of up to $40,000, or both.

The prosecutor’s office offered the deal because the critical witness in the case was not available to testify, according to deputy prosecuting attorney Cami Lewis. The witness, a felon, had been in jail but was released and could not be located at the time of Olmstead’s court proceedings. A warrant was issued for his arrest. He is now back in jail.

Without the witness, the prosecutor’s office did not feel it could prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt, which is why the deal was offered, Lewis said.

The case was first presented to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for charging in federal court, but after a year and a half of no action, the county prosecutor’s office filed charges in May 2010. Olmstead’s first court appearance was in June in Kitsap County District Court. The deal was finalized Oct. 22.

The charges stem from a December 2008 incident where Olmstead took two laptops and coins from an undercover police officer, according to court documents. The officer was working with Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office detectives. Video and audio recordings were taken of the exchange, according to documents.

When deputies searched Olmstead’s house for suspected stolen items, he told detectives he took the items and planned to see if they were stolen. If they were, he told detectives he planned to return them, according to documents.

Olmstead is a former sergeant with the Los Angeles Police Department and was with the department six years before becoming a deputy prosecuting attorney for Los Angeles County. He later worked for three years for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Seattle, before going into private practice as an attorney.

Olmstead told detectives he previously bought guns from Chad Lewis Cash, a South Kitsap man arrested in November 2008 for burglarizing more than 80 homes in Mason and Kitsap counties. He knew Cash was a felon.

Cash told detectives about Olmstead, according to court documents. He was also the witness that prosecutors could not locate to testify against Olmstead during the court proceedings earlier this year.

When police searched Olmstead’s residence on Dec. 30, 2008, they found multiple stolen guns. Olmstead told detectives he took “a bunch of guns” wrapped in a blanket from Cash, according to court documents.

He apologized to police, saying poor judgment and a weakness for guns got him in trouble. He said he purchased guns from Cash twice, but that the rest of the guns in his collection were obtained legitimately, according to court records.

The illegal rifle police found was not purchased from Cash. In a phone interview, Olmstead said he couldn’t remember how he came across the gun, but that he “got it years ago when I lived in Bellevue.” He had the gun for parts and owned it before the state made short-barreled rifles illegal on July 1, 1994, he said.

Olmstead is still practicing law and has no current public disciplinary action against him from the Washington State Bar Association, according to association spokeswoman Judy Berrett. Olmstead was censured in 1993 based on conduct in 1990 when he was found in contempt of court for negligently violating the court's restraining order in a dissolution matter, according to the bar association's news letter.

A review committee will look at the circumstances of the conviction to determine if further disciplinary action is required, she said. No information about the investigation will be made public, unless a formal complaint is filed with the disciplinary review board, Barrett said.

This story has been corrected to identify prior Washington State Bar Association disciplinary actions taken against Thomas Olmstead.